James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (90 page)

As we just saw as well, the text also knows the language of ordinary baptism, prefacing this more
Holy Spirit
-oriented pr
o
cedure with an allusion to routine and probably ‘
Daily
’ ritual immersion as follows: ‘
Whoever ploughs the mud of Wickedness returns defiled and he shall not be justified by what his stubborn heart permits
…
nor reckoned among the Perfect Ones
,
nor shall he be cleansed by atonements
,
nor purified by cleansing waters
,
nor sanctified by seas and rivers
,
nor washed clean by any waters of ablution
;
for,
seeking the Ways of Light
,
he has looked towards Darkness
,
rejecting the Laws of God
.’
42
The la
n
guage of ‘
rejecting
’ – in particular, ‘
rejecting the Laws of God
’ – will be important throughout the Scrolls and applied quinte
s
sentially, in the Habakkuk
Pesher
in particular, to the opponent of the Righteous Teacher, ‘
the Man of Lying
’ or ‘
Pourer out
’/‘
Spouter of Lying
’
.

If we were to look at this from a ‘
Jewish Christian
’ or ‘
Ebionite
’ perspective – taking an individual like James or John the Baptist as the type of
the Righteous Teacher
– then there can be little doubt that the genus of individual being described so negatively here resembles Paul more than any other historically-identifiable person.
43
On the other hand, the ‘
Sins
’ of a person of the opposite genus, one who ‘
undertakes the Covenant before God to do all that He commanded
’ (note the ‘
doing
’ vocab
u
lary again), not to ‘
depart from the Laws of His Truth to walk either to the right or to the left
’, and ‘
walks perfectly in all the Ways of God
’,
44
‘
will be atoned for
,
so he can look on the Living Light
and he will be
cleansed
of all his sins by the Holy Spirit joining him to His Truth
.
And he
will be purified of all his sins and his trespasses atoned for by a Spirit of Uprightness
and Humility
,
for only with the humble submission of his soul to all the Laws of God
will
his flesh be made pure for ablution with cleansing waters and sanctified through the waters of immer
sion
.’
45

This is also the gist of Josephus’ picture of the teaching of John the Baptist, according to whose description, as we have seen (but it bears repeating), John ‘
commanded the Jews to exercise Goodness
,
both as regards Righteousness towards one another and Piety towards God
,
and so to come to baptism
,
which cleansing would be acceptable to Him
,
provided that they made use of it not for remission of sins
,
but to purify the body
,
supposing that the soul had been thoroughly purified befor
e
hand by Righteousness’
46
– of course, the very opposite of the picture of John’s baptism in the New Testament, except in so far as there is refraction.

The Community Rule draws to a close with such an outpouring of poetic ecstasy as to to be fairly overwhelming. Amid a
l
lusion to ‘
looking upon the marvelous Mysteries of Eternal Being
…
concealed
from mankind
’, which God gives as ‘
a Fountain of Justification
’ and ‘
a Well of Glory to His Chosen Ones
’, it reiterates that God ‘
caused this Elect
to inherit the lot of the H
o
ly Ones and to be
in Communion
with the Foundation of the Sons of Heaven as a Council of the Community
and
the Found
a
tion of the Holy Building
,
as an Eternal Plantation with all the Ages of Endless Being
’.
47
Yet again, these are just the words Paul uses – with slightly varying and, in fact, often inverted connotation – when in 1 Corinthians 3:9–11 he applies ‘
building
’, ‘
planting
’, and ‘
laying the Foundation
’ imagery to speak about how ‘
Apollos watered
’ (in 1:12 and 3:22, he somehow adds ‘
Cephas
’ to this mix) and describes the Community as ‘
God
’
s Plantation
,
God
’
s Building
’. This ‘
Building
’, whether Community or Temple, he identifies here and elsewhere as ‘
Jesus Christ
’ or, if one prefers, his ‘
body
’.
48

Apollos (another of these ‘
certain Jew
’s) – this time, identified in Acts 18:24 as ‘
having come to Ephesus
’ – according to the often tendentious picture Acts there provides, had been ‘
instructed in the Way of the Lord
’, but only knew ‘
the baptism
’ of someone it refers to as ‘
John
’ (18:25) – meaning, it would appear,
he only knows
‘
water baptism
’. Normally this ‘
John
’ is taken to be ‘
John of Ephesus
’ (in the Gospels, seemingly, ‘
John the son of Zebedee
’) but, according to the picture we are developing here and the one one gets from the literature at Qumran, the baptism being referred to here can only be that of the original ‘
John the Baptist
’ whoever the ‘
Apollos
’ being spoken of here may have been. Moreover, if the ‘
Cephas
’ being referred to here and in 1 Corinthians 15:5, is the same as the individual most – including the Gospel of John, the Pseudoclementines, and Epiphanius – call ‘
Peter
’, then, according to these latter two testimonies anyhow,
he rose daily at dawn and prayed
(obviously following the ‘
Essene
’ way),
wore only
‘
threadbare clothes
’ (as Josephus tells us ‘
the Essenes
’ did), and
was a
‘
Daily Bather
’.
49

All this comes to a resounding climax in the Community Rule in the atmosphere of evocation of ‘
this being the Time of the Preparation of the Way in the wilderness
’ and ‘
zeal for the Law
’, graphically described in terms of ‘
the Day of Vengeance
’, and ‘
zeal for the Judgements of Righteousness
’.
50
This may have been a uniquely Palestinian militancy or a ‘Jamesian’ Palestin
i
an synthesis of some kind not duplicated among ‘
Daily Bathing
’ practitioners outside the Land of Israel or without attachment to it (except, of course, in Islam – though this last, following the new approach of Mani as we have seen, drops many of these extreme purity practices such as ‘
daily bathing
’ or
ritual ablution
). This unique combination of extreme purity-mindedness with militant ‘
Messianism
’ (regardless of the depiction of Jesus’ view of ‘
cleanliness
’ or, for that matter, his generally ‘
pacifistic
’ att
i
tude in the Gospels) and xenophobic ‘
zeal for the Law
’, given voice in these documents, explains the ruthless Roman repre
s
sion of it at least in Palestine if not elsewhere.

‘
The Way in the Wilderness
’ and Final Apocalyptic Holy War

To return to the War Scroll which, in the manner of these allusions to ‘
this being the Time of the preparation of the Way in the wilderness
’ and ‘
zeal for the Day of Vengeance
’, now turns more aggressive – in the blueprint it provides for final apocalyptic Holy War, the reason it gives for ‘
keeping indecent behavior
’ or ‘
fornication
’ away from ‘
the camps
’ is that ‘
your God goes with you to fight for you against your enemies that he may save you
’, a loose quotation of Deuteronomy 20:2–4.
51
This reference to ‘
Saving
’ or ‘
Deliverance
’ is again based on the same Hebrew root as ‘
Yeshu
‘
a
’ or ‘
Yesha
‘
’, that is, the Hebrew root of the name Jesus as it passes into the Greek, highlighted in a number of Qumran documents and forming the emphasis of climactic key portions of the Damascus Document, as we have seen.
52

In the Damascus Document, ‘
Salvation
’ and ‘
Justification
’ (‘
Yesha
‘
’ and ‘
Zedakah
’ are promised to ‘
those who fear His Name
’. Another way of translating this last phraseology is the familiar ‘
God-Fearers
’, seemingly a category of persons attached to synagogues throughout the Mediterranean world in some sort of affiliated (
e
.
g
., ‘
the
Nilvim
’ or ‘
the Joiners
’) – if not co
m
pletely orthodox – status. This is a group among whom Paul would seem to have been particularly active.
53
The emphasis, too, in this phraseology on ‘
Name
’ and ‘
naming
’ will be an ongoing one and will, for instance, be echoed in new and, again, often inverted significations normally associated with Jesus’ ‘
name
’ – for example, in Acts ‘
those called by this Name
’ instead of the fairly repetitive ‘
those called by name
’ in the Damascus Document.
54

Such persons, designated under this rubric of ‘
those who fear His Name
’ in the Damascus Document – ‘
God-fearers
’ in other vocabularies – are described in terms of ‘
loving Him
’ or ‘
keeping
’ either
His Covenant
or
His Laws,
this last being both the language of
Piety
and
Righteousness
. The Damascus Document for instance, even uses in these contexts the language of ‘
Naziritism
’,
i.e.
, ‘
keeping away
’ or ‘
apart from
’ (
lehinnazer
/
lehazzir
/
linzor
) in three or four separate circumstances already allu
d
ed to above.
55
In the Book of Acts as well, this language of ‘
keeping away
’ or ‘
refraining from
’ is precisely that of the ‘
Judg
e
ment
’ (‘
I judge that
’) James is pictured as making at ‘
the Jerusalem Council
’ and the terms of the directives he makes at its co
n
clusion – namely, ‘
abstain
’ or ‘
keep away from
blood
,
fornication
,
things sacrificed to idols
’ (in one version as we saw, ‘
the pollutions of the idols
’),
etc
. in Acts 15:19, 29, and 21:25.